1. Field
The embodiments discussed herein are directed to an information processing method, an information processing apparatus and an information processing program by which communication can be made with a plurality of terminals through a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
CGM (Consumer Generated Media) such as word-of-mouth sites, Q&A communities, social networking services (SNS), blogs and COI sites have become popular with the advance of Internet-related technique in recent years. Word-of-mouth information is put in the CGM due to user's direct contribution of information on the Internet. That is, user's real experience and first-hand voice can be placed on the Internet. Since the free opinion of one user is placed thus as word-of-mouth information on the Internet, any other user can make a judgment based on the placed word-of-mouth information as to whether or not to buy a product at a store, whether or not to use a facility (a restaurant, a hotel, a hospital, etc.), or whether or not to participate in an event (a firework display, a festival, etc.).
On the other hand, a portable phone used in mobile environment in recent years is provided with not only a telephone function but also an Internet connection function to make it possible to browse Web sites and transmit/receive e-mails. Particularly, a portable phone has a digital camera function, an application software execution function, a GPS function, etc. with the rapid advance of use of the portable phone as an Internet terminal in recent years. The portable phone is evolving into a device which goes beyond the borders of an Internet terminal and which has functions of a portable information terminal (such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)). The use of such a portable phone permits a user to place fresh word-of-mouth information on the Internet in real time any time and anywhere when, for example, the user has used a purchased product, the user has used a facility or the user has participated in an event.
When a user inputs word-of-mouth information by using a portable phone, character input made through the portable phone takes a great deal of time and labor to the user because of limitation in input keys compared with character input made through a personal computer. Particularly, when the user inputs a long sentence by using the portable phone, a bigger burden is imposed on the user. For this reason, in many cases, the user does not want to take time and labor to input word-of-mouth information.
In order to lighten such a burden on the user, the portable phone is generally provided with a predictive conversion function. Ordinarily, the portable phone provided with the predictive conversion function can display conversion candidates in order of frequent or recent use from characters inputted in the past when the user inputs only one character. However, when, for example, the user has used a facility located in a certain region, the portable phone cannot display words concerned with this region as conversion candidates. For this reason, a great deal of time and labor may be taken when the user wants to input word-of-mouth information concerned with the facility by using the portable phone. Specifically, when the user can understand representation (Kanji characters, etc.) of the facility from the facility name written on a signboard, etc. of the facility but does not know how to pronounce the facility name, it takes a great deal of time and labor for the user to input the facility name by using the portable phone.
Therefore, there has been known a method in which a plurality of region-specific word dictionaries having words recorded in accordance with regions respectively are provided in a server unit, a region-specific word dictionary corresponding to a current position of a user is selected from the plurality of region-specific word dictionaries, the selected region-specific word dictionary is downloaded from the server unit to a portable phone, words predicted based on a character inputted by the user are retrieved from the downloaded region-specific word dictionary, and the retrieved words are displayed as high-ranking conversion candidates. Thus, it is possible to reduce time and labor for inputting word-of-mouth information concerned with the facility.
In the related-art method, however, for example, keywords included in transmission information (word-of-mouth information) becoming a topic of conversation currently in a certain region could not be displayed as conversion candidates on the portable phone because words of region-specific proper nouns were fixedly recorded in each region-specific word dictionary.
In the aforementioned related-art method, a Kana-to-Kanji conversion engine needs to be installed in the portable phone so that words recorded in a region-specific word dictionary can be displayed as high-ranking conversion candidates. Further, the portable phone needs to have a mechanism for downloading a region-specific word dictionary from the server unit to the portable phone and recording the downloaded region-specific word dictionary on the portable phone. For this reason, the aforementioned related-art method could not be achieved by any ordinary portable phone.